Call of Water (Madame Tan's Freakshow Book 1) by Marina Simcoe

3 Stars

I need to preface this review with the information that I typically love everything else this author has written. The writing and editing was very clean in the ARC version of the manuscript, with no typos that I found and well constructed, pretty sentences. The world building was vivid, with the menagerie coming to vivid life. The characterization left me feeling somewhat removed from both the hero and heroine. However, where this book failed for me was in the development of the romantic relationship. The hero and heroine spent large chunks of this novel apart, and the scenes where they were together and trying to build a loving relationship were fairly short and few in number, considering the length of this novel. I did not buy into their HEA because they still did not know each other very well by the end of the novel. I may have bought the HEA more if this novel had used the Fated Mates trope, in order to set up instant love and devotion between them, but it did not. I was also really disappointed that at the end of the novel, the hero and heroine's life spans were still massively disparate. If they had formed some sort of mating bond where the heroine's lifespan was elongated to match the hero's, or the hero's life span shortened to match the heroine's, I would have bought into an HEA between them more easily. The plot and pacing was exciting and tight. There was low angst and high stakes in this novel, which is typically one of my preferred narrative structures for a romance novel. This novel used the Partner in Trouble trope and the Imprisoned trope. I thought the world building, plot, and pacing was four stars. The characterization was three and a half stars. However, the development of the romantic relationship was two stars, which is not good for a genre romance novel. This novel had a Happy Ever After ending instead of a cliffhanger, so that is a good thing, even though I did not fully buy into the HEA at the end. I recommend this author's other work quite highly, especially her novel Gravity. However, I do not recommend readers start with this particular novel if you want to try out this author. I will read the next book in this series because I love her other work so much, and hopefully the next book will be much better than this one. I will not be buying myself a keeper copy of this novel.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

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